The Light of One Night
by IsabellaImogen
Summary: Kim's POV during the last few minutes of the show. If you haven't seen Miss Saigon, this is basically the biggest spoiler of them all. One shot (heh, literally much). Please RnR.


The heavy purple scent of the burning incense hung like a shroud in the air as Kim knelt at the small shrine that bore the pictures of her parents in a cheaply gilded frame. Small white jasmine blossoms, she had bought fresh from the flower vendor that morning, already wilting in the heat, turning brown around the edges. The wisps of smoke wound about her face, her eyes closed, her hands pressed palm to palm, head bowed. She fought desperately for the words to pray, but her fear even choked the words she knew by rote. In some morbid twist, words burst forth from her core, words she had not wanted to remember, words she had wished were not as real as they had been to her for the past three years.

_Dju vui vay _

_Yu doi my_

_Dju vui vay _

Vao nyay moy 

Tears would have pricked her eyelids, but she forbade even the thought of weeping. Her eyes had been dry and clear now for many hours as resignation had set in. At last she murmured brokenly

"Please forgive me, gracious parents, and take a repentant daughter with you." She blew out the candle and left the incense to burn, turning to climb upon the bed. Kim glanced once more at the small form of her son where he sat across the room, waiting for his father. Tam's back was to her, his face to the door through which a man would soon come, a man to take him to a new life in America, a life in which Kim knew she had no rightful part. In the silence of the room, Kim could hear her own laboured breathing, the blood roaring in her ears, and, suddenly, the distant footsteps and voices coming towards her room.

As they drew nearer, she knew one voice above them all; one voice through the paper-thin walls made her pause.

_Chris…_

He _had_ returned. He was coming for his son. Maybe it was all a mistake and he—

But Kim knew there were no such things as mistakes. Many had called Tam—her son, her love, her life—a mistake, but she had always known better. No mistakes. There were no mistakes.

More words rose up to haunt her mind, worse now that any of the dreams of Thuy that had ravaged her nights with nightmares and stunted her days with guilt.

_The movie in my mind _

_The dream that fills my head _

_A man who will not kill _

_A man who will not kill…_

_No!_ thought Kim. _This is not Chris' fault. None of this is anyone's fault. There is no fault, only choice. This is my choice, and his, when he chose…_

She could hear _her_ voice now, softer, gentler, soothing…

_She'll be good to him, and Tam. And I'll be there to watch over them all. Chris needs her now, more than he needed me, and Tam's future lies with them, thus he no longer needs me too._

As the doorknob turned and Tam's small face turned towards his mother one last time, where she nodded and smiled, gesturing towards the door. Tam obediently turned back to face the door and Kim hastily drew the curtain around the bed.

Footsteps sounded, then stopped. No one spoke. Now was the time.

Kim drew the gun from where she had kept it, under her pillow, for the past three years, loaded and ready.

_It was said a bullet to the heart doesn't hurt_, mused Kim as she pressed the barrel to her chest, feeling the cool ring of metal through the thin, cheap fabric of her dress. _The bullet to my heart didn't hurt right away the first time either, only after I'd had time. And now there will be no time. Not for me. _

She paused, taking a deep breath. She felt so calm, it was strange. These were the breasts that had nursed Tam, the breasts Chris had kissed, touched as they'd made love; and now she would destroy them, along with any connection to her son or the man she'd called husband.

As the fire seared through her skin and she felt the bullet pushing its way through bone, muscle and sinew, white-hot pain obliterating any ache she might have felt over Chris or Tam or Ellen or any of them, Kim nearly gasped in shock. She glanced at the blood that had blossomed like a crimson flower on the fabric of her dress, and she gazed into Chris' aghast and horrified face with something akin to reverence and awe. She shuddered in quiet rapture, her eyes clouded with the deliciously sweet pain of it all. She knew her life was slipping now, she could feel it ebbing, and saw the black encroaching on her vision. She barely knew what she spoke as she looked at Chris, speaking the words she'd rehearsed in her mind so many times.

"The gods have guided you to our son."

The next words came utterly unbidden and spontaneously.

"Hold me one more time…" She wanted so much to share her pain with him, the bliss making her sob with its intensity. She wanted to release even a little of it, feeling it would overwhelm her if she didn't; but as always, her pain was solely for her to carry and feel in every cell of her body and every facet of her mind, heartand soul.

"How in one night have we come... so far?" Her question nearly made her smile, as she had been referring to herself and the broad spectrum of emotions she had felt that night rather than the words they had said to one another so long ago. The joy of finding Chris and knowing he was coming to find her, the horror of Ellen's revelations, the cold fury at her own foolishness, her hope for Tam, the love that she still felt in spite of it all, the bitterness that had vanished as she knew her course was set and unchanging.

Her final thought was light, curious and blurred by the giddiness of her agony.

Who knew suicide felt like ecstasy?


End file.
